Hello friends! I'm preparing for a Vietnamese feast this night and I would like to know how to cook rice noodles, and which technique is better-soaking your rice noodles in some cold water for about 30 minutes before cooking or boiling them right away without soaking?

You can use the warm water procedure for any other stir-fry dish. This method allows you to cook the noodles partially to soften them a bit while they retain their hardness inside. If you want to add the rice noodles to your soup, this method is also appropriate.

However, you can easily add your noodles to your soup without cooking or soaking them first. Then use boiling water to either cook your noodles fully or partially, but this is the only known way you can cook your noodles unless you plan to cook them for a longer period as an aspect of another dish. If the rice noodles is intended as part of a cool noodle dish, the boiling technique is still appropriate. This includes both bean and salad dishes. When cooking flat rice noodles to be used as wrappers, boiling the noodles is also an option.

Below are some of the step by step instructions

Get all your rice noodles placed in a deep bowl for mixing, and try not to snap a lot of them while removing them from the pack.

Boil some large quantity of water. Pour the warm/boiling water on top the rice noodles until you submerge them completely.

Stir the noodles to make them more loosened every one or two minutes. Once you notice they have gone limp completely, taste them to see if they have been cooked thoroughly. The vermicelli noodles with a thread-like appearance used for making spring rolls will be well cooked within a few minutes. But the flat noodles, depending on their body thickness might take about 10 minutes to cook through. Be attentive and make sure you taste the noodles often to make sure they don't turn out mushy from overcooking.

Once you are sure your rice noodles have become tender, get them drained and run a very cool water through them to end the cooking. If you won't use them immediately, tossing them with some sesame oil will ensure they do not stick together.

More to read:

Even with a little sesame oil, the noodles will still stick to each other once they have been drained. But once you mix them in your dish, they will get loosened again.